The Four Stages
by amtrak12
Summary: There are four stages one goes through before saying 'I love you'. This is Penny's journey.
1. You Think You Think It

**The Four Stages**

**AN: ** Yes, this is the _actual_ chapter one. Not the part I posted yesterday. I had to post them out of order cause Stage 3 was the only fluff I had available last night to cheer up some friends. Anyway, for those who are just finding this fic today, this story is inspired by the _How I Met Your Mother_ season 2 episode entitled "First Time In New York". In the intro, Ted Mosby described the four stages a person goes through before they say 'I love you'. I thought they were fun and decided to utilize them in a BBT fic. Below is Stage 1. This part takes place not long after "The Cornhusker Vortex".

**AN 2:** And yes, I did catch the irony of having Penny comment on how sad it is that John Ritter died. I caught it late (like after I wrote most of this), but I still caught it.

**1. You Think You Think It**

It was a lazy Saturday afternoon and Leonard and Penny were curled up on the couch watching TV. Today's Great DVD Debate wound up going to _Scrubs_. Honestly, it was one of the few shows the guys owned that Penny would watch voluntarily, without anyone coaxing or cajoling. They were currently watching the episode "My Cake" from season four.

"Man, it's so sad that JD's dad died," Penny said. "I really liked him."

"Yeah, me too," Leonard agreed. "But the actor died in real life so the writers decided to kill the character too."

"No!" Penny sat up and looked at him. "Seriously?" Leonard nodded. "Well that makes this even more depressing."

"I'm sorry!"

Penny pouted, and Leonard pulled her back against him and kissed the top of her head.

"It's still_ Scrubs_, though. So it's still funny."

"Yeah, Dr. Cox always cracks me up," Penny said with a smile. At that moment, Dr. Cox walked into JD's apartment, causing Penny and Leonard to laugh at the timing. Apparently, his and Dan's new plan to cheer up JD included wearing hockey jerseys and drinking beer while watching football. Penny never understood Dr. Cox's insistence on wearing the hockey jersey, but it was amusing nonetheless.

_"'Now talk.'_

_'What do you want me to talk about? The pros and cons of blitzing the weak side corner when you're in 3rd and long situations.' _Thank you Football for Dummies."

Penny smirked. Then as Dan started doing commentary on male college cheerleaders, a thought struck her. "Hang on!" She sat up again. "Football for Dummies?"

Leonard looked at her. "What about it?" he said cautiously.

"Did you..." Leonard shifted, uncomfortably. Penny narrowed her eyes. "Leonard. Did you read Football for Dummies?"

"No!" Leonard said quickly. He glanced briefly back up at her. "Okay, yes," he admitted quietly. "Though, Sheldon taught me some stuff, too." His gaze shifted to an interesting spot on the couch and just stayed there.

Penny watched him for a few moments before leaning down to kiss his cheek.

"You're adorable," she said, snuggling back down on the couch. "Ridiculous, but adorable."


	2. You Think You Know It

**The Four Stages**

**AN: **I know. Third installment, 2nd chapter. "WTF?!" right? The explanation can be found in the first or third chapter's author's notes. I hope this didn't confuse you guys too much! This is the second stage in the four stages of saying 'I love you' as described by Ted Mosby from _How I Met Your Mother_. This scene takes place sometime after "The Gorilla Experiment".

**AN 2:** And yes, I do believe Penny owns at least one season of Gilmore Girls on DVD. :P

**2. You Think You Know It**

"Ugh! I just can't get this!!" Penny threw up her hands exasperated.

"Yes, you can! You'll get it. Now, let's try again," Leonard turned back to the drawing in front of them. He pointed to the circle. "_This_ is the football."

"It doesn't look like a football."

"Well, it's physics. We model it as a uniform sphere to make it simpler."

"Why?"

"Because if we use the actual dimensions of a football the math will come out to be several pages long instead of just a few lines." Penny blinked a few times.

"Okay, so that's a football." Leonard smiled.

"Yep! And the football is traveling down the field along this arc," he traced the curve with his finger, "at 6 meters per second in this direction." He drew an arrow going from the ball up towards the right at a diagonal. "And that angle is 30 degrees. Now, what you're trying to figure out is how long it will take for the ball to move 50 meters down the field. So what are you going to do first?"

Penny stared at the paper blankly. "Uuuummmmmmmmm...." She couldn't think of what the first step should be. Which was incredibly annoying because she _knew_ Leonard had just shown her how to solve these kinds of problems not 15 minutes ago. _Come on, you can do this. Now think! What was it that Leonard had said about objects moving in 2 directions? _Penny couldn't for the life of her remember. It seemed the harder she thought about it, the more uncertain she got, which was making her more and more frustrated.

"Okay, this ball is moving up and to the right." Leonard stated patiently.

"Uh, huh...."

"And you're trying to solve for the x-direction," Leonard continued, tracing the length of the field.

Penny continued to stare at the paper, confused. She was completely and utterly lost. Tears were starting to prick at her eyes which irritated her further. She did NOT want to cry about this. Especially not in front of Leonard.

"So you have two directions and you're only concerned with one of them. What do you do?"

"I don' t know!" Penny finally exclaimed.

"Yes, you do," Leonard said calmly.

"No! No, I don't! Because I'm stupid, and I'm never, ever going to understand this stuff!" She flopped back on the couch and crossed her arms. A stray tear or two started to fall, and she hastily swiped at them. Damn tears.

Leonard watched her thoughtfully for a moment. Then he simply said, "Okay," and stood up.

"Okay?" Penny gave him an incredulous look.

"Yes, okay. I know what you need." He picked up a DVD box set and held it up for her to see.

"Gilmore Girls? Oh, great! You've given up on me too!" Penny slid further down on the couch.

"No! You need something to clear your head. So we'll watch an episode of Gilmore Girls, and then we'll go back and tackle the football problem. I bet you anything, you'll be able to solve it right away."

Penny gave him a half-smile. "Tackle the football problem?"

"Yeah, I said that on purpose. Did you like it?"

Penny's smile widened. "So wait, you're really going to watch Gilmore Girls with me? I thought you didn't like that show."

"Well, it's not so much that I don't like it," Leonard answered, placing a disc in to the DVD player. "It's more I don't understand it. Seriously, I think the characters speak a different language sometimes." Penny giggled.

"You just don't get all the pop culture references."

"Not at all," Leonard shook his head as he joined her on the couch. She scooted so she could curl up beside him and rest her head on his shoulder.

"So you really think I'll figure out that physics problem?"

"Shhh, just watch the show."

*** 50 Minutes Later ***

"And 50 divided by 5.196," Penny muttered as she entered it into the calculator, "and the answer is ... 9.6 seconds!" She looked over at Leonard hopefully. He grinned.

"Yep! That's right!" He said brightly.

Penny jaw dropped open. "Seriously? I got it right?"

"Yeah, you did." Leonard nodded.

"Oh my god!" Penny crushed him in a huge hug. "I can't believe it! Did you see? I even used those triangle sign things without having to ask for your help!"

"Trig functions," Leonard automatically corrected. "And yeah, I did!" He gave her kiss. "I told you you could do it."

"Man, that was so much easier than I thought it was. How did you know I needed to watch Gilmore Girls?" Penny asked.

Leonard shrugged. "Well, I could tell you were getting frustrated, and I know when I get frustrated it's better if I focus on something else for a bit. Then when I go back to the original problem, it usually makes a lot more sense."

"So you get frustrated by problems too, still?"

"Oh, yeah! All the time."

Penny nodded thoughtfully for a moment. Then she broke out in a big grin. "I solved a physics problem!" Leonard laughed.

"Yes, you did," he said proudly.

Still grinning, Penny leaned in to kiss him.

"Thank you, Leonard."


	3. You Know You Know It But Can't Say It

**The Four Stages**

**NEW AN:** Moved again! Sorry! Last time, I swear. New content is chapters 2 and 4.

**AN: **I am going to be completely posting this out of order now. It wasn't my original plan, but **webuiltthepyramids** seemed to be in some desperate need for some fluff tonight. The premise of this fic is to take Penny through the four stages of 'I love you', as defined by Ted Mosby in How I Met Your Mother - Season 2 ("First Time in New York"). The following is Stage 3 and it takes place after "The Large Hadron Collision".

**3. You Know You Know It, But You Can't Quite Say It**

Leonard poked his head into the apartment. It couldn't quite be classified as 'late' yet, but Penny had obviously gone to bed awhile ago. The lights were all out and the air was filled with the kind of silence one only finds amongst the sleeping. Leonard softly crept over to the bedroom and looked in on his girlfriend. She was curled up on her side, back to the door, with one arm stretched out over the empty half of the bed. Her hair was falling out of a ponytail she'd forgotten to take down and the covers were partially tossed off like she couldn't decide if she was cold or not. Just seeing her brought comfort and relief to Leonard. It had been a long trip without her there, and worrying about her health constantly hadn't made it pass any quicker. He hoped she was doing better now than she had sounded on the phone the other day.

He removed his shoes and jacket and then crossed over to the other side of the bed. "Penny," he whispered, gently shaking her arm. She grumbled something incoherently and curled tighter into her pillow. Leonard frowned. Maybe he shouldn't wake her after all. He removed his jeans and slid into the newly vacated half of the bed (his half of the bed), but couldn't resist planting a soft kiss on her forehead before settling down. This time Penny sighed and started to relax again. Leonard caught one of her hands, and thread his fingers through hers. She squeezed his hand almost instinctively. This made Leonard smile, and he decided to try waking her again. "Penny," he whispered and kissed the back of her hand. "Wake up."

Finally, Penny's eyes fluttered open. She smiled as her eyes settled on Leonard, and she sleepily said, "Hey, you're home."

"Yeah, literally just got back from the airport." His thumb started tracing slow circles on the back of her hand. "How are you feeling?"

"Mmm, better," Penny answered. "I haven't thrown up for two whole days." She considered that a major accomplishment.

Leonard's expression was torn between bemusement at her tone and concern over her words. "Is your fever down?" He shifted so he could use his free hand to feel her forehead.

"Yeah, for the most part. I think I still have a low-grade fever whenever they Tylonol wears off, but it's not up over 100 anymore."

"Well, that's good." He kissed the top of her head. "I'm sorry you got sick."

"You shouldn't be sorry. I'm the one who ruined Valentine's Day."

"You didn't ruin it," Leonard contradicted.

"Um, pretty sure I did with all my puking."

"You didn't ruin it," he said firmly. "You just postponed it."

Penny raised herself up on her elbow so she could look at him better. "Postponed it?" she asked, curiously.

"Yeah, I was thinking when you're completely better, we can still go away for a weekend. Not to Switzerland, obviously. But somewhere that isn't Pasadena. We can get a hotel and be _away_ from Sheldon and everyone."

"Seriously?" Penny was thrilled. "Oh, my god, that sounds amazing! Can we still go skiing?"

Leonard grinned up at her. "Yeah, we can still go skiing. Whatever you want. It will be our own Valentine's Day."

Penny squealed and gave him a great big kiss. Leonard laughed and the two of them scooted so that they were curled up together with Penny's head lying on his chest.

Penny sighed contentedly. "Leonard?"

"Yeah?"

"I," Penny bit her lip. "I'm really glad you're back."

"Me too," Leonard answered, softly kissing her hairline and smoothing back a fallen strand. "Me too."


	4. You Know You Know It & Can't Keep It In

**The Four Stages**

**AN:** This is the fourth and final installment in the four stages of an 'I love you', as inspired by _How I Met Your Mother_. This one isn't tied to any particular episode. It just takes place at some point after "The Large Hadron Collision" (obviously). Probably not the 'I love you' scene you were thinking of, but it's what popped into my head. Dedicated to all the awesome Snowflake Snugglers over at fanforum. I'm so glad I found you guys!! Go LP!!!

**AN 2:** Random, but I just realized that I somehow managed to reference one of my favorite shows in 3 of the 4 installments. LOL Also that the actual 'I love you' is the shortest scene. Weird how that worked out.

**4. You Know You Know It and You Can't Keep It in Any Longer**

_It turns out all those warnings are right. There is no 'perfect moment' for anything, especially when it comes to three little words. Love isn't a grand gesture. It's not planned out in advance. It doesn't wait for the right time. And it certainly doesn't create fairytale-like scenes full of lights and music and dancing. Love simply gathers all the tiny moments up and makes them feel special. Gives them meaning._

_Love creates it's own 'perfect moments'._

~~***~~

"Leonard! Stop stealing my toothpaste!"

"I didn't steal it" Leonard replied, sliding over so Penny could get into the bathroom too.

"Oh? Then who's toothpaste is that then?" She asked, pointing to the toothbrush in his hand.

He quickly stuffed the toothbrush head in his mouth and mumbled, "Mine." Penny reached for her tube of toothpaste and eyed the nearly empty tube critically. "Oh, yeah, you're almost out of toothpaste," Leonard said between brush strokes.

"Really?" Penny said dryly. "Maybe that's because _someone_ keeps stealing it." She lightly elbowed him in the ribs. Leonard frowned a bit and kept brushing.

"So how come you keep buying your own toothpaste, if you just end up using mine anyway?"

Leonard spat in the sink and rinsed it with the faucet. "I don't. That tube's been there awhile." He raised his brush to his mouth again, but paused when he caught Penny's expression in the mirror. He turned to look at her properly. "What?"

"So you've been stealing my toothpaste for a while now, huh?"

"Um...."

Penny raised an eyebrow.

"Well, you see," Leonard started, trying to avoid getting into trouble, " the term 'awhile' isn't very specific. It could refer to almost _any _length of time, from a few minutes to a few a years. Or even, in the case of immortal beings such as Vandal Savage or the Doctor, 'awhile' may refer to several centuries. Although, come to think of it, the Doctor isn't technically immortal because he only has 13 bodies. But with the success of the New Series, there's been some speculation that the BBC will choose to ignore that fact and continue Doctor Who long past the 12th regeneration. Or they'll come up with some way..."

"Leonard," Penny interrupted before he started listing all the possible ways a fictional alien could obtain more lives.

"What?"

Now Penny had many responses lined up, all battling to be said: "Stop stealing my toothpaste", "Just answer the question", "Who the hell is Vandal Savage?", even saying nothing and just simply laughing instead. But none of those were what wound up bursting out of her mouth.

"I love you."

Leonard, who hadn't been expecting that statement, just stood there for a second or two letting the words sink in. Then his face lit up in a large smile. "I love you, too."

Penny chuckled softly and shook her head as she turned her attention back to her own teeth cleaning preparations.

"By the way, you still owe me a new toothpaste."


End file.
